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New Japan Pro-Wrestling

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New Japan Pro-Wrestling was one of two wrestling promotions (the other being All Japan Pro Wrestling) to split off from the JWA in the 1970s. Founded by Antonio Inoki in 1972, it competed with AJPW for supremacy in the wrestling field. Despite floundering during the 1990s due to AJPW's dominance, NJPW is currently the largest wrestling promotion in Japan and one of the largest in the world.

From its creation in 1972 until 1986, NJPW was a member of the National Wrestling Alliance, although All Japan was able to block most Western talent from working in New Japan; the main holdouts were André the Giant, Hulk Hogan, and Stan Hansen (who eventually jumped to AJPW, becoming the highest paid wrestler in Japan in the process). Traditionally, New Japan was the least "Westernized" of the two major league promotions, working a more realistic, submission and kick-based style based on Eastern martial arts. While more of a "sports entertainment" presentation used by NJPW compared to its AJPW counterpart somewhat offsets this (although this situation got reversed when AJPW entered the "Puroresu Love" era), the company is also known for openly engaging in working agreements with various MMA and pro wrestling promotions around the world, including: Consejo Mundial Lucha Libre, World Wrestling Entertainment, World Championship Wrestling, TNA, Ring of Honor, PRIDE Fighting Championships, Pro Wrestling NOAH and various other MMA and pro wrestling promotions. Their biggest yearly event is the show at the Tokyo Dome on January 4th, Japan's equivalent to WrestleMania, which has been known since 2007 as Wrestle Kingdom.

Tropes associated with New Japan Pro-Wrestling:

Action Girl: As is tradition in Japan, wrestling promotions are strictly single-gender, but New Japan averted this in 2002 bringing Joanie Laurer to its roster. She stayed only two months in the company, but got impressive wins against male workers.

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When the Bullet Club and the Kingdom feuded, the wives of Michael Bennett and Doc Gallows (Maria Kanellis and Amber Gallows) joined them in a 6-Man mixed tag match that also involved their husbands' tag partners, Matt Taven and Karl Anderson.

A Day in the Limelight: Then-rookie Hiroshi Nagao got a bit of fame when Yoshihiro Takayama chose him to be his partner against the Makai Club. However, the Club attacked him and injured his knee, and he had to return to the dojo.

Air Guitar: Hiroshi Tanahashi does this often. Yohei Komatsu did it with a broom while he was supposed to be sweeping in front of the New Japan Dojo.

Alternate Company Equivalent: Antonio Inoki to All Japan's Giant Baba, their own nWo to WCW's. Captain New Japan to Marvel Comics' Captain America. Los Ingobernables de Japon to CMLL's group.

Takashi Iizuka, even in real life. He sent Kazunari Murakami to the hospital during the 1.4 Incident.

Akira Maeda was fired from NJPW for kicking Riki Choshu in the face and breaking his orbital bone. Even later, he didn't have a single year free of legal troubles due to his tendency to assault people. He even vowed to kill Yoji Anjo and was arrested for it.

Big Van Vader, though less so away from the ring.

B Show: New Blood Evolution Valiantly Eternal Radical, NEVER! A showcase of young and independent wrestlers. Got it's own Open Weight title belt in 2012. However, Katsuyori Shibata made his NEVER Open Weight belt defenses about proving his superiority over the rest of the "third generation" who had brought New Japan back from the brink.

Josh Barnett claimed he wanted to defeat Mirko Cro Cop in PRIDE by using German suplexes and powerbombs to remember everybody he was a pro wrestler. Considering that he trained Bob Sapp, who was famous for using those moves in the MMA ring, he was probably serious. He turned it into an Overly Long Gag from his fight with Jimmy Ambriz and stated he was sorry for winning via punches and not German suplexes.

Another one by Tatsumi Fujinami. "Without fearing the change of time, we will continue to push and move forward. Please give your support to New Japan Pro-Wrestling in the future."

As the best native shoot-style wrestler, Yuji Nagata has been in charge to wrestle every shooter or mixed martial artist who came to New Japan during the 2000s. Unfortunately for him, this was the reason Inoki sent him to fight in MMA bouts against Cro Cop and Fedor.

Shinsuke Nakamura then took his mantle, partially due to his more successful MMA career.

Bishōnen: Several over its long history, Kota Ibushi being one of the more memorable specifically promoted as such.

Boring, but Practical: The cross armbar (juji-gatame) is the most basic finisher in strong-style, as it has proved to be a very effective move in MMA and other martial arts.

Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Many over time, such as Tetsuya Naitō, who is known for pulling on his eyelids, lounging whenever possible, gave Watanabe a makeover and renamed him EVIL...and also won the Heavyweight IWGP belt.

Butt-Monkey: Commentator Shinpei Nogami. In the finals of the 2012 World Tag League he had to do commentary in the winter of an unheated arena after being tied up and having his shirt ripped off, for example.

Probably the best example is the main character of the '70's manga and anime Tiger Mask, who was brought to New Japan to be played by breakout cruiserweight Satoru Sayama. His Evil Counterpart Black Tiger was a similar case, regularly played by foreign wrestlers. Both of them were turned into Legacy Characters. Tiger Mask W and Tiger The Dark have also shown up for "special" matches.

In the same line, Keiichi Yamada was endorsed with the Jushin Liger gimmick years after.

Character Overlap: When Riki Chosu allowed Masanobu Fuchi and Toshiaki Kawada from All Japan onto New Japan territory it indirectly lead to the creation of Bad Ass Translate Trading, a Power Stable that had members from both locker rooms.

As mentioned in the description, they have them pretty frequently, especially with CMLL, whom will defend their belts on New Japan pay per view and will even do commentary on New Japan's shows in exchange for NJPW doing the same. As of 2010, the two have agreed to work together at least once a year on the Fantasticamania event, though the events often end up including two shows and sometimes as many as five.

New Japan belts have been defended in TNA shows, including pay per views. It had a series of collective pay per views with Ring Of Honor as well as going to "war" with NOAH.

Taken to the logical extreme with their partnership with ROH, including a four-night crossover pay-per-view in America, ROH tag team reDRagon holding the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championships for the better part of a year despite not having an official NJPW contract, and the ROH World Championship being defended and challenged for by ROH wrestlers on an NJPW card.

Determinator:Jushin Thunder Liger is the standout example. He was starving himself just to become a professional wrestler and has not let brain tumors stop his career.

"Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Most of Montel Vontavious Porter's music was his own doing. In fact, despite NJPW remixing VIP Balling into "Most Valiantly Person", they actually included more of the original song than WWE, whom he originally wrote it for. Rocky Romero also did the themes for Forever Hooligans and Roppongi Vice.

Driven by Envy: Yuji Nagata claims envy is what lead to the creation of the strong style, as rather than suppress the fact they were sore about not being able to compete with All Japan due to all the great foreign talent it kept barring from working for them, it was decided more productive to express it in the most visible and violent way possible. Even when All Japan collapsed on itself he says there are plenty of other things to be envious of, which the dojo boys are encouraged to fixate on and take out on their opponents.

Engrish: Lots of it, even those who speak it as a first language often get saddled with Engrish monikers, such as World Greatest Tag.

Inverted in the case of ROH's The Kingdom. Despite being major Smug Snakes in America, in NJPW they were pushed as nominal faces as an extension of their feud with the Bullet Club, who at the time were popular faces in ROH.

Follow the Leader: Started phasing out a lot of "American" wrestling tropes and conventions until Toryumon's first graduating class came back from Mexico and started using such cheats and ref bumps to much success. Though it took New Japan going into painful slump before they finally relented and followed suit.

Hypocritical Humor: Wallid Ismail criticized Royce Gracie for being a "fake fighter" just before revealing he was going to work pro wrestling matches with NJPW (see What Could Have Been in Trivia). It's unknown if he did it on purpose.

I Know Karate: Due to the strong style penchant for legitimacy, it's almost a requirement to new wrestlers in NJPW to have martial arts/combat sports background.

This was the theme behind the Fighting Club G-EGGS, composed by former martial artists and real fighters. Their members were Yuji Nagata and Manabu Nakanishi (amateur wrestlers), Yutaka Yoshie (judoka), Brian Johnston (mixed martial artist) and Masakazu Fukuda (sumo).

In an interesting twist, Masahiro Chono knew soccer, on which he based his powerful kicks.

Invincible Hero: Since his beginnings as NJPW founder, Antonio Inoki made himself invincible against all odds through purely self-centered booking and became the absolute hero of Japan. Even now, he is known for his refusal to pass on the torch.

The first Tiger Mask (Satoru Sayama) managed to make an example of Tropes Are Not Bad. He retired from New Japan with zero defeats, but the crowd loved him until the end.

A common complaint leveled at Hiroshi Tanahashi, though he subverted it hard with several major losses, not least of which included losing the IWGP Heavyweight Championship back to Kazuchika Okada, as well as a major loss before that against Karl Anderson in the G1 Climax (which, despite it having been a non-title bout, ended up de facto guaranteeing a title shot for Anderson).

Japanese Politeness: While the wrestlers coming out of here are notorious for being anything but, the crowds who attend New Japan have become increasingly nice and subdued as time went on, especially after a riot against Vader beating Antonio Inoki lead to New Japan being banned from its first home venue, Sumo Hall. Later at NJPW Power Struggle 2012 when Alex Koslov demanded that they rise for the singing of the Russian National Anthem, they complied and politely clapped when he was done!

The former yokozuna Koji Kitao. He had a notorious hostility with Riki Choshu, who thought Kitao didn't deserve his push, and was fired for taunting him with ethnic discriminationnote Choshu is Korean-Japanese.

Akira Maeda is an older example.

Jerkass Has a Point: Kevin Kelly often questioned occasional fellow commentator Gino Gambino about why he saluted fellow Bullet Club member Bad Luck Fale during entrances. Gambino replied that Fale was "a war hero", which sounds like a silly thing to say but the Bullet Club OG members did wrestle control of the stable from TheElite in their own private civil war separate from the overarching NJPW faction war.

Jobber: Young Lions are this by design. The IWGP deliberately restricts what moves they're allowed to do in order to make them more predictable and only allows them to do more things when they've proven sufficient mastery over their limited repertoires. And even then it usually coincides with a "learning excursion" where they're trust into a completely new environment which usually results in them losing even more while they try to adapt.

Mob War: In recent years, NJPW cards have been increasingly best summed up as a massive multi-year mob war between several different factions looking to run roughshod over the company and a loose contingent of faces dedicated to stopping them all. The seeds for this started with the creation of CHAOS when former RISE leader Shinsuke Nakamura stole nearly the entire faction roster from Great Bash Heel in 2009, then Satoshi Kojima starting Kojima-gun only for Minoru Suzuki to steal it out from under him and redefine it as Suzuki-gun in 2011. By the time four heroic gaijins had a FaceHeel Turn and started the Bullet Club in 2013, CHAOS had already become tweeners due mainly to Nakamura and Kazuchika Okada's popularity, going on to feud with both Suzuki-gun and Bullet Club and officially giving birth to the company's faction wars. After Suzuki took his army to NOAH, Los Ingobernables de Japon slowly filled Suzuki-gun's place after Tetsuya Naito's heel turn, then Suzuki-gun came back in 2017 while LIJ continued gaining momentum, and even the aforementioned face defenders took up a faction brand of their own  first under the largely-failed anti-Bullet Club faction Hunter Club, then under the moniker of Taguchi Japan to get back at LIJ. Because of this, it's not uncommon to see many NJPW cards be filled with tag team matches between several members of any two of these five major camps.

The "test of will" spot relies on this - mid-match, two wrestlers take turns punching or kicking each other as hard as possible, and the first to show signs of pain loses the test.

Non-Indicative Name: The International Wrestling Grand Prix is not an event(unlike the Japan Grand Prix), but a governing body. The IWGP Championships are not events either, but title belts, which makes things confusing around the time of CMLL's Universal Championship, which is an event (for a title belt).

One Steve Limit: The reason Giant Majin is called such instead of Giant Titan (already have a big Titan) or Giant Magnum (already have a Magnum Tokyo, and Giant Majin is from Tokyo too so that simply won't do). On the other hand, he was teamed up with New Strong Majin and Super Strong Majin in the Makai Club, which also had eight guys called Makai (and claimed sixty-nine).

Power Stable: Currently, there are four major factions dominating the promotion (five if you count the usually-unaffiliated pure babyfaces who often have to band together to deal with them):

CHAOS: Created by Shinsuke Nakamura and Toru Yano in 2009 to recapture the spirit of Strong Style wrestling, it is currently led by the new Ace of the promotion who once had a record-setting reign as IWGP Heavyweight Champion, Kazuchika Okada. Other current members include Yano, Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto, Yoshi-Hashi, Roppongi 3K (Sho and Yoh with Rocky Romero), Will Ospreay, and Robbie Eagles. While the group started off as heels, the members' popularity saw them gravitate more towards faces, or at least tweeners, when compared to the other groups, before eventually outright aligning themselves with the main unit in order to take on the latest lineup and incarnation of the next stable on the list

Los Ingobernables de Japon: An offshoot of the Los Ingobernables group from CMLL created by Tetsuya Naito, who joined it during his excursion to Mexico. He has since drafted Evil, Bushi, Sanada, Hiromu Takahashi, and Shingo Takagi into the stable. While heels, the group has drawn much popularity thanks to their leader, eventually becoming tweeners who can be face or heel as the plot demands much like CHAOS was before them.

Suzuki-gun: Also known as the Suzuki Army, it is lead by their namesake Minoru Suzuki who previously ousted former leader Satoshi Kojima (the group was originally named Kojima-gun). The group is freelance, having followed Suzuki to Pro Wrestling NOAH and left New Japan for a time before returning at the start of 2017. Other members include Lance Archer, El Desperado, Taichi, Taka Michinoku, Yoshinobu Kanemaru and Zack Sabre Jr.

Because of this, the more textbook babyfaces of the promotion have effectively been pulled into a loose makeshift alliance of their own, as whether they simply want to compete to be the best or outright intend to defend the company from all these forces, the faction atmosphere is simply too strong for them not to have to contend with it. At least twice in as many years, a minor-card face has tried to unite them under a particular banner. Yoshitatsu previously tried to create Hunter Club specifically to counter Bullet Club, but Hiroshi Tanahashi and Michael Elgin both declined despite being his Six-Man Tag Team Championship partners. The only ones he could get to join the "group" were Captain New Japan, whose embarrassing lack of success got him voted out by fans on Twitter and caused him to turn against Tatsu to join Bullet Club, and Billy Gunn, who Yoshi recruited as a partner for the World Tag League after becoming a parody of Triple H. The heroes instead eventually gravitated towards Ryusuke Taguchi, officially going under Taguchi Japan after 2017's Wrestle Kingdom 11, with even Yoshitatsu himself joining as soon as he got the chance. Since Bullet Club restructured itself to be more dangerous at the end of 2018, the main unit has also aligned with CHAOS in a mutual alliance to take them on.

Power Trio: The teams who compete for the J SPORTS CROWN 6 Man Openweight Tag Team Tournament and later, the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Titles.

The Quisling: Kazuo Yamazaki, who deserted from rival promotion UWF International seeking his opportunity to shine. He didn't get it, but helped to promote the shoot-style wrestling in the NJPW Dojo, where he was instructor for a time.

Real Men Wear Pink: Yutaka Yoshie, who is called "The Pink Warrior" for his jolly pink attire.

Ring Oldies: Most today such as Yuji Nagata, Jushin Thunder Liger, Manabu Nakanishi, and others are in their late forties and early fifties having been competing since their twenties. They can still go and kick plenty of ass.

Rival Dojos: Inoki's policy about presenting his pro wrestling as the strongest martial art caused a lot of dojo yaburi or dojo challenging from real martial artist who wanted to expose them as the "fake fighters" they were. Unfortunately for the challengers, the New Japan Dojo produced very tough people to boot. As Josh Barnett said:

"Judo guys and karate guys showed up at the dojo because of advertisements saying pro wrestling is the strongest martial art in the world. Those guys would show up to prove that wrong. They'd close the doors and the New Japan guys would trash everybody."

Sadist Teacher: The NJPW Dojo is known by his extremely harsh training regime, and his most famous instructors have always been feared by their trainees. Kotetsu Yamamoto and Yoshiaki Fujiwara are the best examples.

It's said that Kensuke Sasaki (accidentally?) killed a trainee named Hiromitsu Gompei in a training session. Details remain unknown.

Shoot the Dog: The 1.4 Incident. During the third match between Naoya Ogawa and Shinya Hashimoto, Ogawa broke kayfabe and bloodied the unaware Hashimoto with legit strikes, after which he grabbed a microphone and taunted the crowd. Soon, the NJPW staff got into the ring and Ogawa's cornermen (including his bodyguard Gerard Gordeau and Kazunari Murakami) had to gang up to protect Ogawa from the wrathful Riki Choshu and his minions in the subsequent brawl. It's said that Inoki ordered Ogawa to shoot on Hashimoto to increase his popularity, and Ogawa took the opportunity with no second thoughts.

Scott Hall gave the Bullet Club his blessing to use The Kliq's hand sign. That the Kliq is one of the most hated groups in all of professional wrestling is all else you really need to know.

Former NJPW president Masakazu Kusama used to call himself "Kusa-McMahon", which was probably one of the reasons Inoki fired him.

The members of Team JAPAN sometimes came to the ring with Kotetsu Yamamoto doing the "Gracie train", like the Gracie family in the first events of Ultimate Fighting Championship.

Start My Own: One of the earliest in what would be a long trend of this sort of thing, leading to Pride Fighting somewhere down the line

Take That!: When NJPW launched New Japan World they announced the price was 999 yen per month, similar to how The WWE Network was and still is daily advertised with a month price of $ 9.99. Gets better, if you look into it, 999 yen rounds up to eight and a half dollars meaning it's cheaper to purchase than WWE's own network.

Took a Level in Badass: This happens to Young Lions, graduates of The New Japan Dojo who spend their first years in opening matches and losing a lot, only winning against other Young Lions. After having worked hard enough and deemed ready, most are sent overseas to other promotions for seasoning. When they come back, they have developed their own gimmicks and are now accepted on the main roster. The most notable example is Kazuchika Okada, who went from a rather forgettable run in TNA as Samoa Joe's sidekick to beating the company's Ace for the world title and becoming the youngest person to ever win the G1 Climax upon his return to New Japan.

Tournament Arc: While NJPW has many recurring tournaments, the G1 Climax is their most prestigious and the one that garners the most mainstream attention. It's a round robin style tournament where the winner receives a world title shot at NJPW's biggest event, Wrestle Kingdom.

Notably, the G1 winner's reward was slightly tweaked in 2012. Then-winner Kazuchika Okada implemented a briefcase rule (ala Money in the Bank) which held the contract to a title shot, but it needed to be defended regularly against any willing challengers before Wrestle Kingdom. Failing to do so results in the briefcase being transferred to the victor.

The Worf Effect: Captain New Japan's win-loss record is deceptively skewed towards losses. He wins in enough team up situations and such to look competent but gets beat to establish threats a whole lot.

Worked Shoot: The "Different Style Fights" were a tradition back in the old days of NJPW, when Inoki was establishing the strong style. They were essentially worked Mixed Martial Arts-like bouts which showcased Inoki and other New Japan wrestlers proving themselves against legit martial artists, who normally were on the losing end. Later Shinya Hashimoto revived them, what led him to the infamous Hashimoto vs Ogawa feud.

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